Huawei opens Lagos innovation centre

Prof. Duro Oni, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Unilag, and Frank Li, Managing Director of Huawei Nigeria, inaugurating the Joint Open Lab of the University of Lagos & Huawei IMAGE – SUPPLIED

From OKORO CHINEDU in Lagos, NigeriaLAGOS, (CAJ News) – HUAWEI, the Chinese firm, has inaugurated a US$6 million Innovation and Experience Centre and the Joint Open Lab of the University of Lagos (Unilag).

The Innovation and Experience Centre will also serve as a training platform to nurture more ICT talents.

It is established under the concept of “Cloud”; which enables visitors to share Huawei global resources.

Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications, says the centre complements government efforts to leverage the benefits of the digital revolution.

“Therefore I would like to use this opportunity to express my appreciation on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria to Huawei Technologies for partnering with the Ministry in the area of Human and Institutional capacity development,” Shittu said.

ICT Industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the Nigerian economy, with a 30 percent yearly increase rate. Consequently at the second quarter of this year 2016, ICT Industry has occupied 9,8 percent of Nigerian GDP.

In 1999, Huawei entered Nigeria. Over the last 17 years of development and growth, we have become a big family with over 1,200 staff of which 70 percent are locals.

In order to assist Nigeria to develop its own ICT skills and infrastructure, Huawei Abuja ICT Training Center has trained more than 12 000 employee, customers, suppliers as well as partners.

Last December, Huawei signed an MOU with Government, with the aim of providing more than 2 000 training opportunities to Nigerian youths.